Geek Posted May 10, 2011 Posted May 10, 2011 <div class="KonaBody"><p>Some of the most secure passwords you can use are those that are randomly generated. From the <a href="http://osxdaily.com/category/command-line/">command line</a>, you can randomize potential passwords in a multitude of ways, and we’ll cover several primary methods and then show you how to combine commands to make passwords even more random.</p> <p>First, we’ll try my go-to method that uses openssl:</p> <p><code>openssl rand -base64 6</code></p> <p>The output of this command will be completely random, and look something like: cG/ah3+9</p> <p>You can adjust the length of the password by changing the number on the end of the string. If you don’t want to end up with any abnormal characters like / and +, you can generate from hex too:</p> <p><code>openssl rand -hex 4</code></p> <p>If that isn’t random enough, you can pipe the randomized output of openssl through md5 and trim the md5 hash of the randomized output down to a set number of characters:</p> <p><code>openssl rand -base64 8 |md5 |head -c8;echo</code></p> <p>You can also get creative and take random input from other commands, such as date, and trim 8 characters from the current dates md5 hash:</p> <p><code>date |md5 | head -c8; echo</code></p> <p>Or even ping:</p> <p><code>ping -c 1 yahoo.com |md5 | head -c8; echo</code></p> <p>Using the md5 method, you can take the output of any command, or file, to create a secure password.</p> <p>Obviously all of these randomized passwords aren’t easy to remember, which is why it can be helpful to use a password manager, but that’s another topic.</p> </div> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/l0OGswCcei_d2fALOF_hP6t8Tg0/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/l0OGswCcei_d2fALOF_hP6t8Tg0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/l0OGswCcei_d2fALOF_hP6t8Tg0/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/l0OGswCcei_d2fALOF_hP6t8Tg0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=F7RgdnMOjCU:vHTMYiL1WV4:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=F7RgdnMOjCU:vHTMYiL1WV4:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=F7RgdnMOjCU:vHTMYiL1WV4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=F7RgdnMOjCU:vHTMYiL1WV4:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=F7RgdnMOjCU:vHTMYiL1WV4:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=F7RgdnMOjCU:vHTMYiL1WV4:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=F7RgdnMOjCU:vHTMYiL1WV4:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/osxdaily/~4/F7RgdnMOjCU" height="1" width="1"/> View the full article
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